I mentioned my love of Farscape to a friend the other day. He’s a bona fide sci-fi geek, loves Battlestar Galactica and Babylon 5 and – bizarrely – Buck Rogers. But when I dared list Farscape as a favorite of mine, he looked at me incredulously.

“What, the one with the Muppets?” he demanded.

This made me so angry I could barely speak. Yes, Farscape has Muppets. Get over it, people. Avatar has what are essentially cartoons, and no one questions its legitimacy -- at least, not for that reason. Farscape has Muppets and it is awesome. And anyone who refuses to give it a chance because they think they’ll be watching an hour-long Pigs in Space is being completely backward, ridiculous and prejudiced. (Just ask Greg the Bunny. Not to mention, what’s wrong with Pigs in Space?)

So, what is Farscape? It is the story of 20th-century astronaut John Crichton (Ben Browder) who finds himself shot through a wormhole during a test flight and suddenly deposited in a distant part of the galaxy. His arrival causes the death of a well-connected fighter pilot, a Sebacean from that race known as Peacekeepers, and he is summarily sentenced to a grisly fate by the deceased crazed older brother, Captain Crais (Lani Tupu). With luck, he ends up on the prison ship Moya, he and the few other inmates stage a breakout, and thence travel their part of the galaxy, all the while evading pursuit and trying to discover Crichton a way home.

And being damn funny while doing it.

Initially present on Moya are Officer Aeryn Sun (Claudia Black), a disgraced Peacekeeper pilot who looks phenomenal in leather; General Ka Dago (Anthony Simcoe), a Luxan with an outrageously long tongue and a chip on his shoulder; Zhaan (Virginia Hey), a blue photosynthetic priestess with a dark past and Dominar Rygel XVI (Jonathan Hardy), the long deposed slug-like ruler of far-flung Hyneria. Other refugees come and go -- arrogant Jool (Tammy McIntosh), psychic Stark (Paul Goddard), creepy Noranti (Melissa Jaffer), nymphomaniac Chiana (Gigi Edgley), among others.

The one constant on the ship is Pilot.

Pilot (voiced by Crais himself, Lani Tupu) is, like Rygel, one of those despised Muppets that so doomed this show in some eyes -- and he is one of the best parts of it. A many-armed creature bonded to the living ship that is Moya, he plays the essential role of the Innocent and Literal Alien Being: the Mork, the Data, the Zoidberg. He’s the one to whom human (-ish) nature must be explained, as he sees the world only in black and white -- what is good for Moya/what is bad for Moya -- and cannot comprehend the evil than men do. Of all the spaceships on which we’ve spent much time -- the various Enterprises, the Galactica, Destiny and even the Andromeda Ascendant -- only Moya is truly a character in her own right, one whose feelings must be taken into consideration, and one who is often showcased as a metaphor for whatever the hot topic of the episode might be. When stuff goes wrong on Moya, it affects Pilot, and we know Pilot. Sure, systems might malfunction on some ships, the water supply might be low on others and invaders might seek to capture yet more, but with Moya, that shit is personal.

Creator Rockne S. O’Bannon, as he’d previously done with Alien Nation, gives us a cosmos in which humans are emphatically not the masters of the universe… and that’s okay. He gives us layered characters and snarky quips and some of the most gut-wrenching, back-biting and real relationships on TV. Pop-culture references from the quick-witted Crichton abound, often many at once: “I am not Kirk, Spock, Luke, Buck, Flash or Arthur frelling Dent. I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas” -- and, ah, yes, “frell”. Long before BSG’s “frack” there was “frell” and “mivonks” and any number of other alien-language curse word euphemisms that got by the censors with impunity. Farscape offers up some truly trippy episodes, some of sci-fi’s most complex world-building and some crazy creepy villains. It gives us danger and romance and comedy and action, along with serious big picture meta themes like redemption, rebirth, sanity and sacrifice.

The chemistry between the main actors is outstanding right from the beginning, especially that of leads Browder and Black -- Crichton and Aeryn are one of the hottest couples genre has ever produced and their rocky road to happily ever after takes some impressively original turns.

Farscape is not all perfect, of course. There are times when the dastardly Crais’s obsession with Crichton becomes a chore to watch, and the similar fixation of über-villain Scorpius (Wayne Pygram) can be taxing. Rygel’s vulgarity can be, well, vulgar and the less said about witchy old woman Noranti, the better. The guest acting can occasionally be painful -- filmed in Australia, the series is populated with former soap stars -- and even some of the leads don’t always manage to hit the mark.

But for the most part, Farscape is a landmark achievement in science fiction television that ended too soon, though the two Boom Studios comic book series that began in 2008 -- conceived by O’Bannon, written by Keith R. A DeCandido and gorgeously collected in hardcover editions -- continue the series admirably.

If you’ve never given Farscape a chance, then I urge you to do so. Please, please don’t be dissuaded by the puppets. This is so much more than Pigs in Space.

Though, again, what would be wrong with that?

  -- Rachel Hyland